Van Helsing: The Virtual SeriesGuiltPilot
by Writrzblok
Summary: Set three months after the events in the film, Van Helsing still feels the guilt over Anna's death and a malevolent stranger intends to take advantage of it. Meanwhile a young woman with awesome, yet mysterious powers enters the Order. This is the first e


Van Helsing

Episode 1:

Guilt

Act 1:

He bolted upright from his bed, sweat glistening in the moonlight that he still hated so much. _Damn the moon_, he thought, covering himself in blankets. Anna would not leave his mind, despite his faith in her spirit resting in peace after years of fighting the darkness and the undead. All Gabriel Van Helsing, or at least that was what he believed to be his name, could do is try to return to sleep. He let his long curly mane softly coil on his pillow and naturally spilt when he closed his eyes to rest once more.

The moving picture his eyelids would show contained a radiantly beautiful young woman. Tossing her dark black hair to one side, and giving a smile that could stop London traffic, she couldn't help but be beautiful. It was undeniable, as the fact that it was in a wolf-crazed lunge that such beauty was shuffled off this mortal coil so violently. He didn't have many memories of that night three months ago, but he couldn't stop himself after slaying Dracula with the werewolf bite.

Why couldn't _that_ memory be forgotten? Why must he remember losing a woman who he desperately cared about…to hell with it, he loved her to his own uncontrollable hands? How come he can forget his name, his past, his origin, but the memory of losing Anna was fresh in his memory and not leaving anytime soon?

Growling in protest, Van Helsing threw the blankets off of his bed and thrashed wildly, slamming his clenched fists into the mattress. In that instant, the hunter wanted to imagine that he was beating his beloved's murderer to death with his bare hands. He might have thrown the bed out through the window of his room, had several padres not rushed in to restrain him. He heard many jumbled voices, mostly with the theme of "Calm down, my son."

But the half dozen priests and helpers could not sooth his rage, only cease his violent activities. After seeing the hallucinatory image of his own brutalized body dissolve into his bed and Anna's murderer still lived, Van Helsing began to sob in sorrow. He went limp in the group's arms and they let him sit on the wooden floor, weeping and wailing.

Cardinal Jinette walked into the room, wearing an evening robe and holding a candle. The young man's pants remained firmly fastened to his lower half, of which he was glad. "Van Helsing?" he said with a gentle tone and an outstretched hand.

"Cardinal," he said, pushing himself to his feet and standing with panted breath. The padres began to leave as he said, "I'm sorry for the outburst. It's just…"

"I know, my son. I know. You are not the first man to have loved and lost. Nor shall you be the last. Perhaps one day, you will find your family, perhaps a grateful wife will be among them," the Cardinal said with certainty. Despite being a man of God, he was still just that, a man. He knew Van Helsing had fallen in love with Anna Valerious.

He could see it on his face as he spoke of her demise at the hands of a werewolf, mere minutes after he killed Dracula. When asked if he killed the werewolf, Van Helsing only said, "The werewolf is no more."

"It isn't what you think," Gabriel had said, "I've been having problems believing what Dracula told me about my past. I don't know how much is true. Do I look like a 'Gabriel' to you?" He stopped to let the minister take a look at him.

"You look like a lovesick fool to me," Cardinal Jinette blurted out with a kind smile. _Well,_ Van Helsing thought, _he knows how to jolt you back from the brink._ "I am not completely uncaring about your feelings toward the late Princess," he explained, "However; I cannot simply let you take time away from your duty to God because you have a broken heart."

"It isn't fair," Gabriel sighed, sitting back down on his fist marked and durable bed. "I do the best job I know how to do vanquishing monsters and beasts from the world of man. I have seen, in all my years doing this job, horrors that would make any man want to live out his days destitute in catatonic paranoia, afraid to move from his bed because of what may be lying underneath.

"I had a chance for happiness, Cardinal. A chance for some kind of normalcy, some kind of good thing to come out of all this death and darkness that I constantly plunge myself into. And now she's gone," Van Helsing muttered, trying his hardest to suppress the memory and the tears it usually brought.

Cardinal Jinette took a couple of steps backward and said, "She is gone, but you are not. And the call must still be answered; but not tonight, my son. Rest, now." With that verbal unofficial mandate, the robed minister exited the room and shut the door firmly behind him.

* * *

A young woman adorned in a flowing red cloak, hood and dark black boots walked slowly through the hallowed halls of the Vatican, with the moonlight draped around her. As she kept her movements paced and down to a dull clopping sound, the woman stopped at a hallway where she could feel thoughts running through her mind. However, they were not thoughts so much as screeching that couldn't be discerned into words without effort.

The young woman concentrated on tracing the source of the thoughts when suddenly she was bombarded with _Screaming like a madman, that Van Helsing. He's gone bloody mad. Wound up tighter than an unopened jar of pickles. Even friars need their sleep, dammit._ The incessant non-stop badgering marked her face with irritation. She hadn't quite yet learned how to block out some thoughts while trying to read others. However, she would come face to face with the source of her annoyance.

Carl walked frantically toward his room near the armory under the main building. He hadn't seen the young woman standing in his way when he bumped into her. "Do excuse me, but some of us…" he paused, not liking the way her dark green eyes seemed to glow behind the darkness of the hood covering her head. "I'm sorry, sir…"

"Madam, don't ye mean?" she said in a low, harrowing voice. The hard Irish brogue was strong yet noticeably forced, meaning to put Carl in his place, "Ye seem to lack manners as you do a backbone, Carl."

Carl stared at the emerald orbs for what seemed to be an eternity. He then said, "Technically, my backbone's where it's always been, madam. H-How do you know me?" After letting the glaring bulbs of light where the woman's eyes should be, he almost didn't want to know.

"Because she is a mind-reader," Cardinal Jinette said, stepping in not a moment too soon for Carl's sake, "Although, one doesn't have to be with you around, eh, friar? This is Lillian McCloud."

Carl let out a humiliated chuckle as Cardinal Jinette walked closer to the young woman. Lowering her hood, she looked not a day above twenty years of age. The hair accompanying the dark green glowing eyes was an unsettling bright red mane. Her beauty had enchanted Carl immediately. She then turned to him, throwing a glare he swore had sent a jolting strike into his stomach. Ten feet away and she had managed to strike his tummy with a sharp jab? How was that possible? Rubbing the thin head of blond hair on his scalp, Carl pondered this while walking out of sight.

The cardinal and the young woman walked briskly toward a cathedral not fifty feet and three corridors away from the living quarters. "Lillian, I am glad you came to Rome. I am sure you will find what you are looking for here."

"What I'm lookin' for," she said, her accent not as rough as when she spoke to Carl, "is control. Control over these powers I have. Understanding as to why I have them, and what I should do with them?"

"I have a guess as to only one of your questions," Jinette said, "I believe that your powers were given to you as a…"

"Test of faith?" Lillian finished the cardinal's sentence. Sitting down at a pew, drawing her fingers in a cross before her and knelt before the altar, she continued, "a tool to be used for God? It feels so nice to be seen in God's eyes as equal to a hammer."

"My child," Cardinal Jinette said, crossing and kneeling next to the young woman before the altar. "It may sound like a prepackaged thing to say. But does that make it any less true? Except the 'tool' part, of course; that part is a little cynical. We like to think of ourselves as servants…agents, if you will. We work to protect the world from the forces of darkness. What greater act can one do to serve God's will?"

With a smirk, Lillian replied, "There's 'loving thy neighbor.'"

With a smile and a chuckle, Jinette stood up and said, "We do that too." Tapping his hand lightly on the young woman's shoulder, the cardinal remarked with a yawn, "It is late, my child. I shall show you your living quarters. They are not the quaint surroundings you are used to, but it is nice for a young woman such as yourself." Lillian stood up and let Cardinal Jinette accompany him to what would be her room.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

* * *

The news on the street was that a murderer was loose in Rome. Two young men were found murdered. Forensic evidence gave no clues whatsoever. Fingerprints were not found on the weapons. Neither were footprints that weren't commonplace in the abodes. Alibis had been checked, nothing appeared stolen and the victims didn't put up a struggle. Nighttime crept on the scene and the investigators were cleaning up the latest crime scene at a two story apartment in downtown.

Van Helsing, sporting a dark black cloak stepped from a mist and waited in the shadows as a policeman was standing guard in front of the crime scene. He made his way over to a street corner out of the lawman's view for a better look. Carl coughed in the fog, walking right behind him. "Excuse me, Van Helsing," he wheezed, "Why must we come out in a fog? Is there some sort of metaphorical reference as it pertains to your foggy memory?"

"Not now, Carl," he grunted through his gritted teeth. He pulled out a pocket watch and then glanced to the guard protecting the crime scene. He then whispered, "Whatever evidence the police found has most likely been removed by now. We're not going to get anything from…" he paused, looking almost on instinct at the rooftop of the apartment building. It chilled him to the bone as the figure showed dark flowing locks of curly black hair and a shape he'd recognize anywhere. "Anna?" he whispered.

"What?" Carl said looking through an overstuffed bag of equipment slung over his shoulder. He had packed a knockout spray, two hand-saws, and a replacement pistol in case Van Helsing lost or broke one of the two in his holsters. Carl knew he had little upper body strength to offer, but the Cardinal had recommended him for more field work since the Transylvania mission. He had strongly protested it, of course, but the reasoning Jinette had given him was only underlying the truth; that the other monks and mullahs and ministers were weary of his (some say "Damnable") inventions interfering with their work.

"Wait here," Van Helsing said, chasing after the familiar, yet mysterious shadow. He made sure to run only while the policeman wasn't looking, and sprinted into the left side alley separating the protected apartment building from a large restaurant/inn. The splashes of the puddles of thrown out pasta, garbage and excrement barely registered as he felt the compulsion to try and follow the dark figure.

His chase would not last long, as the raven-mane feminine form stood with her back to him in the alleyway. She wore a dark blue blouse, tightly but rightly fitting every curve as well as her black leather pants and boots. Van Helsing made no attempt to raise his guns as he approached. "Anna?" he said, with a soft whimper. "How is this possible?"

"One thing you will come to learn very soon," said a soft, cherubic but definitely female voice, "is that anything is possible."

"Why won't you face me?" He said stepping closer, with his hand outstretched.

Without moving an inch, the young woman said, "You won't like what you see, Van Helsing, trust me."

Grabbing her shoulder and pulling her around, Van Helsing softly muttered, "I think I'll be the judge of…"

Stopping in mid sentence and in his movements, Gabriel Van Helsing was met with a visage that startled him into reaching for his pistols. The female, however, exhibited extraordinary reflexes when she clutched his wrists tightly, pinning his hands on the butts of his guns. With as deft a motion as the great hunter himself, she connected with a head-butt powerful enough to knock him flat on his back. The last thing Van Helsing saw before losing consciousness was the visage of his dead beloved, charred and showing signs of being burned alive.

Carl had tried to keep his wits about him when waiting for Van Helsing to return. _Better him than me,_ he thought. He then dismissed the thought, wanting to kick himself for being so selfish and cowardly. He _is_ a friend, despite his garish and roguish attitude. He couldn't very well leave him to die against whatever-in-God's-name he is hunting.

But then again, he _did_ tell him to wait. It wasn't like Van Helsing couldn't take care of his own carcass when danger rose. If he really needed Carl's help, he'd call for him and the friar would be there for him in a hurry.

Turning to see the policeman asleep on the front steps of the apartment building made Carl smile through his worries. Sneaking past a flat-foot like that should be no problem for him. All he needed to do was take one step after another and then…

"Hey!" a figure shouted, grabbing the frail friar by his shoulder and turning him around with a jolt.

With a girlish scream, Carl whirled and went to pull out the replacement pistol. Sighing with relief he grunted out, "Dammit to Hell, Van Helsing! Don't sneak up on me like that!"

"I'm sorry, I couldn't help it," The tall rugged faced man said, with his long brown hair resting neatly on his shoulders. "But cursing from a monk? That's not nice."

"I thought I explained to you months ago that I'm a friar and I can curse as I bloody damn well feel like," Carl said with a serious tone and light shove on the larger man's shoulder. "All kidding aside," the friar said, walking away from the scene beside his partner, "Did you ever find out what you were chasing?"

"It was Anna," he said very plainly. "I don't know how, but it was Anna."

"But that's not right," Carl said, stopping in his tracks, his eyes looking incredulously at the hunter. He was, uncharacteristically for him during a hunt, smiling like a complete idiot. Carl paid no mind to this detail as he said, "Anna is dead. We performed her funeral ourselves, with all due respect. I mean, it's like last night when you were screaming about her. The night before that and the nights before that were the same thing. I could've sworn you had gotten over her death since returning to Rome."

"Maybe I haven't, okay? But I know what I saw," Van Helsing said, growling in protest.

"No need to get your tighties in a twist," Carl said, backing up a few steps. "All I'm saying," He continued, "Is that what you're saying, Anna being in that alley, alive and well, mind you; is, for lack of a better term, impossible."

"One thing you will come to learn very soon," Van Helsing said, turning and facing the friar. The taller and more physically imposing of the two began to force Carl against the window of a butcher's shop. Leaning in, the hunter said, his eyes glaring with an evil spark, "is that anything is possible."

Carl didn't like the tone in the words he had just heard. Another thing he didn't like was the knockout punch that followed, sending him crashing through the window and onto a display two feet from the window ledge.

He awoke minutes after that blow to the head, staring at the ceiling of what he figured to be a butcher's shop. Carl couldn't believe what he had just seen. The stinging hurt he felt inside seemed to trump any pain in his jaw or his back. "Van Helsing?" he whimpered through a torn lower lip. He heard footsteps clopping toward him in a rapid movement.

After the sound ceased, he heard a bellowing sound, "Carl!" then a figure pulled him out of the display debris, helping him to his feet. As his eyes began to clear, Carl finally recognized the visage of Van Helsing, the man who just punched him through that window onto the display. His eyes glared in anger as Van Helsing, in an act of perceived undaunted audacity, said, "Carl, my God, what happened? What did this?"

"You did this!" the friar snarled, shoving violently against his partner. His hat was knocked off completely as Gabriel stumbled against the counter. Carl, who he knew was no physical match for him, was punching and pounding on him in a fury. As much as he didn't understand the actions of his friend, he felt the instinctive need to protect himself. He put his hands around Carl's in a protective embrace, making sure his friend would do no more damage.

"Carl, stop!" he grunted, surprised at the trouble he had subduing the frail friar. "Stop it! I don't know what you're talking about!"

Carl pulled away with a jerk and shouted, "You punch me through a bloody window, which was before going off at the mouth about Anna…"

"Anna? The figure I chased into the alley…it looked just like Anna…but it was as though she had been through fire," The hunter remarked, with his eyes still trying to block the image, yet forced to do so by remembering. "Then out of nowhere, she pinned my arms and knocked me out. I came to and I noticed you were not where I left you. So I hear a window crash from a good half block away and think it might be…whatever it was. But I find you sprawled across the floor, out cold and snoring."

"Of all the ridiculous lies and vile untruths one can tell!" Carl shouted out with incredulity and furious pomposity. "I don't snore!"

Van Helsing picked up his hat and said, "Look, Carl, I don't know what happened to me in that alley, but I know what I saw. If what you say is the truth, I simply don't remember it happening."

Suddenly, from within the shop, more notably from the backroom, a man with a rifle aims his weapon at the two monster hunters standing in his wrecked store. "Excuse me," he said, as they turned to face him. "People are trying to sleep. Be quiet and leave, or be quiet and dead; the choice is yours."

Van Helsing tipped his hat to the rifle wielding man and said, "Come on, Carl. We'll talk about this back home."

Carl's calm, yet more cowardly self returned in full form upon sight of the rifle. "Yes, well…uh…sorry about your window, sir. May the Good Lord…uh…find you a good carpenter?" With that, Van Helsing and Carl made their way to the front door of the butcher shop. Before exiting, Carl picked up the bag of items he dropped after being punched through the window.

* * *

A candlestick, chair, pillow and blanket floated in circular rotations around the room. Sitting Indian-style beneath them at their aerial epicenter is Lillian, her flowing red locks piled neatly in a ponytail on her left shoulder. Her eyes remained closed as her mind concentrated on the objects floating about. The pillow landed safely at the head of her softly cushioned bed. The blanket, stretching neatly and delicately, fell like a feather on the mattress without creasing or crumpling. The chair set down with the ease of a marionette puppet tap-dancing on a miniature stage.

All that remained to put down was the candlestick. She managed to stop its circular floating when a knock of the door abruptly broke her concentration. The metallic object dropped and clunked with a thud on her fiery-colored head. "Ah, bloody…come in."

Suddenly, to her surprise, she was met with a tall, dark (even in a bright, sunlit room) and handsome image. Van Helsing kept his dark jacket and cloak close to him as he entered, "Salutations. My name is…"

"Van Helsing," she interrupted him with an almost impulsive response. She hadn't gotten used to keeping her mouth shut at telling a person's name.

Van Helsing's eyebrow rose, indicating his impressed opinion by the girl's remark. "Good guess, did Cardinal Jinette tell you?"

Turning her radiating eyes away, she said, "No, but then again, I just got in last night. My name's Lillian McCloud." Shaking the hunter's hand, she could feel coldness, emptiness, and death at the touch. "What are ye doing here? No priest I know of dresses or looks like ye."

With no immediate discriminatory facial gesture, Van Helsing said, "That is my business, as I trust your purpose for being here is yours."

"Don't trust anyone, do ye?"

"One can't survive without trust of some kind."

Tilting her head to the side in admission, she replied, "Ye are right. That's one reason I'm here; to learn to trust my own abilities."

"Oh, you mean mind reading?" he said with a smirk.

Surprise filled Lillian's face along with a smile from ear to ear. "You knew?"

With a shrug, Van Helsing backed toward the door, saying, "No, I guessed. Plus I have the strangest urge to scratch my head."

"That'll pass."

"Hope so, it's really irritating." Van Helsing said as he tipped his finger and thumb to his forehead in acknowledgement. He quickly exited the room, vigorously scratching his head as if a creature were trying to penetrate his skull.

* * *

Moonlight bathed Van Helsing's bed in its radiance and loveliness. It didn't ease him into his dreams when he thrashed wildly in his sheets, as he did the night before. As he laid there, his shirtless chest exposed to whatever hapless goof or spy who happened by, a single voice called out in a whisper, "Van Helsing…." His eyebrows arched in a dreaming recognition, but suspending belief, he tried to welcome any good dream he could. "Van Helsing…" the voice echoed, as if trying to get his attention.

The hunter sat up with a grunt and let his eyes swing wide open. The sight filling his eyes was almost as overwhelming as the tears that fought their way free. In a white nightgown, her dark black hair softly dangling along her shoulders, Anna Valerious stood, with her hands to her sides. She looked as if she had been there all along. That she had not perished accidentally at Gabriel Van Helsing's hands.

"Anna", he said, throwing the sheets off. To him, he would guess he floated toward her. His hands touched her face, followed by his lips. Van Helsing's kisses searched for warmth on her lips, but alas, none could be found. This thought was pushed aside when he said, "I…I'm sorry…"

The beautiful Gypsy princess traced her index and middle finger down the man's stubble-riddled cheeks and said, "There's no need, now. We can be together." Anna's face, more beautiful than Helen of Troy after a mud facial, began to bruise. Her teeth were soon visible from the outside, her mouth evaporating before the hunter's very eyes.

The disfigurement didn't cease there, as her eyes became completely white and blank, rolling back into her skull. Anna's nose scrunched against her face before falling off completely. The luscious bosoms that once held many a man's gaze (before reminding them her eyes were a little higher) wilted and sagged hideously toward her belly. The creamy pale skin that he had touched once or twice during the short time he had been with her turned horribly black and rotten.

Her grip became an icy vice like a bear trap on Van Helsing's arms. She said, in a groaning raspy voice, "Isn't that what you desire?"

Using all his strength and screaming out, "NO!" Van Helsing broke free from the apparition's embrace. He stumbled back onto his bed and shrieked, "Get away from me! Stay away! You're not real!" The monstrosity stalked toward him, with the wilted face of his lover and he continued his protests; "Leave me alone! Go away! Get back!" he threw a desperate right cross at the withered entity.

The blow was caught by "Anna's" right hand. She twirled the arm around, hooking it behind his head and then slammed him face-first into the wall above the bed. Once again, Van Helsing was rendered unconscious. Footsteps didn't seem to bother the ghostly female at all as the door slammed open.

* * *

"Oh, my God; Van Helsing!" Carl shouted out at the sight of his fallen comrade. A rat squeaked near his foot and startled him. He brushed it away with his foot and rushed to his friend. Blood began to flow from his forehead where he was slammed into by "Anna." He felt the larger man's forehead, checking for a fever, but could not ascertain in favor of it. He screamed out, "Help! Someone please help!"

Cardinal Jinette and Lillian, in their respective night garments, entered the room with haste. "What's the matter, my son?" he said, in panic.

"It's Van Helsing," the friar spoke out in horribly frightened tone, "I heard him screaming as I was walking from the lavatory, and I found him like this."

Lillian McCloud entered the room as well. She was, at first taken aback by seeing Van Helsing's muscular, shirtless figure. The young Irish woman found it to be quite remarkable. However, she heard Cardinal Jinette call out, "He's waking, thank God." With that, she pushed all carnal thoughts aside. "Son, how did this happen?" the Holy man said, trying to get the hunter's attention.

"It was Anna…some kind of apparition, it attacked me," he panted, feeling the blood flowing down the side of his forehead and into his long brown locks. The statement was accompanied with quizzical looks. "Don't look at me like I'm some half-naked ranting lunatic! I know what I saw!"

Jinette stood up beside Lillian, whose puzzled expression seemed solidified. _What do you think,_ he thought, broadcasting his open mind to the fire-haired young lady.

_I think he is telling the truth_ she replied. _He definitely saw somethin'. Whatever it was shook him up pretty fierce. His thoughts are chaotic._

_I want to believe him, but if he cannot bring himself together, I'll need to replace him._

_Replace him? With wh...Oh my God. _The revelation hit her like a concrete fist in her jaw. _Now I know._

_You said you wanted to learn control. What better way to learn control over your power than to use it in the defense of mankind?_

_That wasn't what I agreed to! I cannot believe you hid that from me when I met you._

_And I cannot believe you didn't find out sooner. You are not the first person with your abilities that I have come across. We'll talk this over later. He needs our help._

Lillian and Cardinal Jinette ceased their mental conversation to aid Carl in putting Van Helsing back on the bed and under the covers. "I'll stand watch over him for tonight. To make sure he is well."

"No, Lillian will watch over him until morning. I must speak with you, my son." Leading him by the shoulder, the padre had led Carl out of Van Helsing's room.

She took a long, saddened look at the pitiful man lying before her. Lillian McCloud, who had her share of heartache in life (but that's for another time) sensed that whatever she felt paled to his pain. The notion of entering his mind to see what the disturbance was dangled like a carrot from a stick fastened on a hungry rabbit's head.

The young Irish woman sat down and held Van Helsing's hand. Another thing she could sense was that he is on the path that Cardinal Jinette has set before her in her quest to gain control of her awesome powers.

Jinette and Carl walked Carl down a torch-lit corridor, well outside of Lillian's mind's reach. "Carl," the Cardinal said, placing a hand on the friar's shoulder, "I think Van Helsing needs to take a sabbatical."

"May I ask why, Your Grace?" he tried to say without squeaking.

"He has lost the love of his life; add on top of that the pressure of hunting down creatures that threaten the existence of mankind. And while you are at it, add the fact that he has no memory of his past, save for his first name, which we do not even really know is his name. He is clearly troubled. Perhaps the time away from hunting can help him."

Carl spoke up, feeling he had to interject on his friend's behalf, "But, don't you want him to hunt down the monster in town?"

Jinette kept his eyes straightforward, saying, "It is already taken care of, young friar. Worry for your field partner. Convince him to take the sabbatical."

Carl twitched at the term, "field partner." He would prefer to call him friend. But, he would run the idea by Van Helsing tomorrow morning when he would be fresh from a good night of sleep. Who knows, one might figure he could warm up to the concept of taking a reprieve.

* * *

The next morning, however, gave no such luck as the man called Gabriel Van Helsing who screamed out, "A sabbatical? I told you I know what I saw." He grunted out loud, holding a hand to the bandage on his head. He hadn't gotten out of bed before Carl told him the news.

Carl tried to keep a reassuring tone, saying, "And I believe you, Van Helsing. But Cardinal Jinette wants you to take a rest so you can recover from Anna's death."

The words brought the hunter's gaze upon his friend, wracked with responsibility over his beloved's demise. "Don't you mean murder?"

"You were under the curse of the werewolf then and were about to become the beast forever at midnight, you had no control over yourself. If I had come in that room a split second earlier, it would've been me laying dead there."

In the coldest possible voice, Van Helsing muttered, "Right, it would've been you. But it wasn't and you thank God in Heaven that it wasn't you."

"I pray to God that it _was_ me!" the friar shouted angrily. "Van Helsing, that mission took things away from me, as well."

Standing up groggily and towering over the sitting friar, Gabriel walked to put his shirt and coat on. "What did you lose at Dracula's castle?" he barked.

"I lost the ability to sleep without bedwetting for the first two days since returning for one thing. But more importantly, I lost my friend there," he said quite simply, with concerned eyes staring a hole through the towering hunter.

Van Helsing wanted to rebuke that argument, but it became clear to him that it wasn't Anna he talked about. It was him. Despite the vision of Anna and her family entering Heaven, he still let himself be racked with guilt over causing her death. These visions or apparitions that plagued him might conceivably be manifestations of the sadness and responsibility he thrust upon himself as a result of actions he could not control. "I'm sorry, Carl. I wouldn't mind taking the sabbatical. But what about the creature that's loose in Rome?"

Carl shrugged, stood up then said, "All Cardinal Jinette told me was that it was taken care of. He just wants you to take the sabbatical, and the creature would be taken care of. But he said only to come back when you're well."

Van Helsing examined the words in his mind, and suddenly a hunch about the presence of a certain red-haired young lady. He wondered whether the young lady is aware the danger she is in for.

* * *

Act Two:

Van Helsing was just then leaving the Vatican and trekking to Sicily to relax when Lillian and Carl set out on horseback toward the town. Another murder was committed earlier that morning near the outskirts of the town heading towards the Holy Cathedral. "So, is there any kind of information on this monster we're looking for?" Lillian grunted out while riding behind Carl. She might have felt more comfortable being the handler, but she felt any handle on the friar's masculinity is vital to his self-image.

"Well," Carl said, trying to handle the reigns properly while scratching his head compulsively, "nothing except there is no witnesses, no foreseeable connections between the victims, and very little evidence except for the broken and mangled corpses left behind."

"Oh, lovely," gagged the young Irish woman, trying not to let the thought of such viscera bother her.

The victim was Leoni Clarmont, a young woman who, as described by neighbors to the authorities, secretive yet non-threatening, was bent backwards to the point where her vertebrae snapped, puncturing her internal organs. Police reports gathered that none of the tenants in the building heard screaming, but only a weird squishing sound.

The pair arrived at the building where the crime took place. They left their horse tied to a post twelve yards away. Lillian, (sporting brown leather top to bottom, even to her boots,) walked with purpose toward the building and said, "Come on, padre." The building was guarded over by two officers wielding clubs and side-arms.

"Actually," Carl corrected, as he rushed behind her, "I'm a friar, and you are opium-sniffing if you think you can just walk right…through…" To his surprise, the guards didn't stop her from entering the doorway. "How did…" realizing they couldn't see him either, he began to squeak out questions, "How am I…"

Lillian stopped in the doorway and said, "I cannot keep this up forever. You gonna come in or stand there looking dumber than I suspect ye already are?"

"Right," Carl said, realizing he hadn't had the urge to scratch his head when she was using this mysterious ability. Another thing he noticed was that her enchanting green eyes illuminated brightly despite the sunlight blanketing her face through the doorway. Upon entering the building and quickly ascending the steps, Carl felt the urge to scratch once more. He kept trying to ignore the compulsion long enough to follow Lillian toward the crime scene.

"So," he said inquisitively, "Your eyes glow when you use your mind powers…How come those guards couldn't see us?"

Lillian, her red cloak flowing against her brown-leather clad legs, never took her eyes off the target, which she retrieved from one of the guard's memory. She said, "Because I masked us from their sight and hearing. Had you bumped into them, you'd have broken the ruse and we'd be on our way to jail."

"Well, right. My head didn't itch either," Carl noted, stopping behind Lillian at the door of the victim's apartment.

"When I don't use my power, it resonates through my skull, giving people the itching side effects. When I do, it goes away."

"Ah, Psychic buildup," the small clergyman whispered.

The red-haired Irish woman closed her eyes and concentrated briefly on the room behind the door. Sensing no other thoughts inside save for a rat, she opened the door and entered. Carl followed suit quietly and began to examine the bedroom, the actual murder scene.

* * *

Leoni Clarmont's bedroom was alight with the rays of the sun and despite such dark circumstances; she kept the room looking like a woman of importance bedded there. The drapes were torn off the broken window, holding glass covered in blood. Gigantic cracks in the walls emanated from where someone was slammed with violent force. Carl felt a sharp jab at his shoe sole and looked down. He lifted his foot to find that he had stepped on a human tooth. "So, what are we looking for?" he heard Lillian grunt out.

"Clues," he replied, "evidence as to the perpetrator's identity, or at least what it is."

Lillian remembered the report of the victim's cause of death and took a good look at the walls. "Whatever it was toyed with her," she said. "Look at the walls. Fists didn't make this kind of damage. Poor girl was slammed into these walls."

"Slammed back first?" Carl said, looking at the mirror. A fresh stain on the glass that stuck to the material like blood yet seemed transparent caught his attention.

"Aye," she replied, "It was basically softening up her back for the grand finale."

"There's some kind of substance on the mirror here. I'm going to see if I can get a sample." Removing a wiping cloth from his bag, the young friar began to carefully obtain the evidence.

Lillian went into the living room, saying, "I'll see if there's anything in this room. Maybe whatever killed her took some time to leave clues here."

"I'd rather you not talk while I'm working," The friar said incredulously, "It makes me nervous to try and concentrate on witty repartee' and science at the same time."

The psychic young woman remarked under her breath, "'Witty repartee'' is not in your vocabulary, monk."

"I'm a Hell bloody be damned friar!" he shouted, trying to concentrate on wiping the mysterious stain off the glass.

As Carl was easing the substance onto the cloth, he saw Lillian's reflection in the mirror. He chuckled, "I see you didn't find anything. I thought you were all-seeing, all knowing."

"No," she said, "But thanks for the compliments."

Carl kept a grin on his bearded face, saying, "You've never heard of sarcasm, have you? It's a wonderful form of doublespeak. It allows one to be humorous yet serious at the same time."

"I prefer not talking; trying to concentrate on words can be truly tiresome. So…" the telepath stopped her sentence to club Carl in the back of the head with her fist. Standing over the prone friar's body, she then said, "…shut your pathetic little mouth."

Lillian was coming out of the bathroom, seeing Carl in the hallway, looking at the floor, crawling on the planks. "Bloody Hell, I'm investigating monsters with a damn bloodhound monk."

"I thought I told you I was a friar!" he shouted.

Suddenly, the red hair on the back of the lady's neck stood up as she began to hear weird screeching sounds in her mind. They couldn't have been a discernable language. Her cloak couldn't protect her from the shivers running down her spine. She looked up at what she saw and had to believe was Carl. However, the image of the frail young friar was beginning to change.

Carl's brownish blue eyes turned pitch black and his mouth warped into a formless lipless opening. Upon opening the mouth, which was also toothless, the same mind-numbing screams that Lillian heard in her mind were now splitting her ears.

The next two seconds were a blur as she felt a hard spinning left shoe smashing into her cheek. Time seemed to not even matter as hands gripped her cloak from behind and slammed her chest first into the hallway wall. She tried to backhand her assailant, but it ducked and caught her right wrist. It drove a knee into her stomach and threw her seven feet onto a table. Looking at the crime scene, she saw that Carl was laying flat on his face, starting to awaken. "Carl!" she shouted once, before losing her voice to a gray, creamy skinned arm wrapping around her throat.

_Help!_ She screamed out in a telepathic blast. Carl still was woozy trying to get to his feet. "Lillian?" he drunkenly said, seeing an unspeakable manner of creature before him, strangling his new partner. He could see her enchanting green eyes closing, possibly for good. The now-somewhat brave friar charged, screaming at the monstrosity.

Black eyes stared in hatred at the pathetic man coming to attack it. A gray-skinned, formless, creature with flaps instead of a mouth and eyelids; two holes shaped like duel nasal caverns passed for a nose. Though it could pass as any being, alter its shape to look like virtually anyone, or anything, it bore a scratch above its left eye where that whore managed to make while killing her.

Carl tackled the creature off of Lillian, wrestling with it on the floor for a second before it shrugged him off. He pulled out a silver stake and aimed it at anything it would hit on the mysterious assassin. It would never reach its mark, however; the creature caught the weapon by his left wrist. One twist and he dropped it. It caught his feeble attempt at a right cross. The shapeless murderer stepped on Carl's chest and flipped a kick into his jaw. The force sent the friar flat on his face and right where the monster wanted.

The creature stepped right in the middle of Carl's back, on his brown robes. It reached down, grabbed both arms and pulled up hard, while pushing down with its foot. Carl howled in pain, feeling his pectoral muscles and rotator cuffs stretch. The monster's strength, as he was experiencing, was phenomenal; and with that conclusion, Carl knew he had only seconds before the pain from his arms being ripped out (along with the massive blood loss) would kill him.

Lillian heard the howling of her partner in this case and tried to bring herself to her feet. She could feel the arrogance and superiority the creature felt pulling Carl apart. If anything made her angry enough to face such a fearsome creature, it was the arrogance that saturated it. "Let him go!" she bellowed, her voice seemingly not her own. The creature didn't heed the warning. In fact, it seemed to pull harder in defiance, despite the building shaking. "How do you like flying?" she asked almost out of nowhere with the unearthly voice.

The creature tilted its head in bewilderment, which didn't last long when it felt a powerful force violently ripping his grip off of Carl's arms. That same force propelled him like a rocket to the left side, smashing him through the wall to the outside. The monster then felt jerked down through the roof, and once again propelled through two more walls. Once it exited the bathroom door, splintering it, the creature began to go limp.

The glowing green eyes inside Lillian McCloud's head blazed darker as her eyes seemed to direct where the creature would smash into. With a growl, she turned her gaze toward the bloody window. The body of the killer immediately was sent (whooshing by her head) into the window and down onto the street below and losing consciousness.

The eyes continued to glow, even as Carl lay prone on the ground, his arms dislocated. The emerald fire in the girl's eyes turned to meet him. The joints in Carl's arms popped into joint. And while he was relieved to be on a track to recovery, he felt a gentle lift, guiding him to his feet. With a grunt and shutting her eyes, Lillian extinguished the Jade fire inside her mind. "Let's go collect our prize now, shall we?"

Despite being grateful for being saved, Carl followed the Irish psychic out the front door in stunned reluctance.

* * *

Cliffside river water danced beautifully downward into a beautiful lake as a lone figure rode his horse along the river's gargantuan stone bridge. Flowing black jacket and fedora hat covering his face, Van Helsing had kept a steady pace on his dark brown steed while the river and the sunshine brightened everything around him. He stopped in the middle of the structure and turned his gaze, overlooking the water pouring like an endless bottle of wine flowing into a cup with an offsetting drain to keep the water from overflowing the lake. After stopping, he dismounted and tied the horse's bridle to one of the slender stone pillars.

Gabriel Van Helsing couldn't help but awe at the wonders of God's finest creations. Away from the burdens of hunting, killing, monsters and technology even for the few hours it took to ride to that point seemed worth forgetting all his troubles. In his mind, the thought of never returning danced like sugarplums at Christmastime. But what was the motivation to go back; fighting the forces of darkness with the prospect of, maybe, learning who he was provided he wasn't killed or arrested?

Had Van Helsing even really considered the type of man he might've been? For all he knew, he was a kind of warrior for some strange country and just bonked his head during a battle. Maybe he was a simple bum out on the street a few years ago and he just happened to drink himself into an inhuman stupor and wound up on the church steps. Or perhaps he had been in the service of the Knights of the Holy Order prior to his amnesia or maybe something more sinister. Did he once serve God before? Did he serve the agents of Hell and the Holy Order couldn't pass up the chance to sway one of their agents and use him to vanquish those he once called allies?

On that train of thought, how did Jinette know he lost his memory due to past sins? What sins could possibly merit the loss of something as precious as an individual's identity? Whatever it was, it must've been something so horrendous that even the devil would go, "Smooth move, Napoleon."

He remembered little except that the rain falling hard on the ground that night. Another glaring memory was the lack of clothing he wore as he made his way to his unforeseen destination.

* * *

_**Seven years ago…**_

_Run_.

That was the only thought on his mind as he staggered drunkenly forward, to his left, then forward again. He had woken up with his face a canvass for a portrait in crimson and raindrops.

_Run._

_Run from what?_ He thought without ceasing to take a breath. His feet struck stone steps and he cried out, thinking he might have broken a toe. But the gash on his head, the source of all his life's fluid leaking forth from out of his body, seemed to trump it as his head grazed those same steps as he tried to progress forward. He'd recognized this place before. It was called Piazza…piazza something…something about a guy named Peter.

Well, whoever this Peter was, he was having a better time than this poor young man. His arms could barely support his weight pulling him up the steps of the cathedral. Each pull and tug was more agonizing than the previous. He felt things moving inside his stomach that, judging by how much he was aching shouldn't be moving.

At the final step, his legs propelled him forward and onto his face. Surely whatever was floating in his stomach (_ribs, it had to be,_ he thought) had shifted violently toward his organs and he felt a metallic liquid taste coming out of his mouth. A single red droplet trickled among countless transparent counterparts.

"_HELP!_" he cried out with the last of his strength leaving on his breath. A last ditch effort, it was almost futile, but one needn't go to his grave thinking he didn't do all he could to stay alive.

For the next several minutes until oblivion, eternity, Heaven, Hell, whatever one believes happens after us mere mortals shuffle off the coil, a deafening creaking filled his ears, followed by an even more thunderous boom and click. The only noise came from a voice that seemed to contain sorrow and pity. "Oh my God!" it echoed, "Cardinal Jinette! Come quickly! Someone's hurt outside the door!"

There was silence except for the rain pattering outside for another minute until a second, more haggard voice exploded into this dying young man's ears. "My God, Help me get him to a bed, Father. Please." After those words were no more, he felt hands and arms grabbing him. After being lifted off the cold, wet steps, all noise faded along with all consciousness.

* * *

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" a voice chimed out behind Van Helsing, startling him out of his reminiscence. Not even a second passed before his pistol was out of its holster and aimed at the interloper's forehead. The intruder didn't flinch even a centimeter in the view of such a weapon. However, it did not stop him from showing concern on his face. "Sir, I mean you no harm. Please, I wish only to admire this landscape's healing beauty as I suspect you do."

"Who are you?" the hunter said, with keen eyes watching the stranger and even more keener hands ready to set up his appointment with a guy named Peter.

He was a young man of considerable youthful appearance. Twenty-three years of age, it seemed. A black rider's cloak covered his white aristocratic fluffy shirt and night-black pants. "When in the presence of such majestic artistry as this, who would bother with names right this instant?" he said, in the calmest, most collected voice the hunter had ever heard.

What Van Helsing found most intriguing about this man was his eyes. Deep blue as the ocean's depths but gentle like it could be someplace one wouldn't mind drowning in. One really could do worse for last looks. He saw no malice in them, and thought not to pry, sensing evil or not. He didn't think to try, anyway. Van Helsing wanted to keep that part of him away as much as he could. But people shouldn't sneak up on others, especially those with guns.

Holstering his gun, Van Helsing said, "Very well. And to answer your question before, yes it is beautiful."

Taking a stand next to the hunter, the young aristocrat overlooked the sun shining over the falls. He said, "I was once told it's one of the few things in this world that God got right."

"Is that so?" Gabriel said, cocking an eyebrow.

"Well, that's the way _he_ put it. I just happen to agree more or less. Now, the point of contention he and I have is on God himself," he said with glaring stare into the horizon.

A slight chuckle escaped Gabriel's mouth as he shook his head. He said, "Hmmm, that's understandable. Religion, along with Politics, is a common source of contention among people of varying opinions."

"You speak truth, my newfound friend. There are so many people with their version of the afterlife. The most absurd one is to believe that there is nothing beyond our natural existence. The one thing they share in common is that they are all trying to convince the other that they're wrong."

"And, if you don't mind my asking, what is your 'opinion'?" the hunter said, keeping his eyes fluctuating back and forth from the panoramic view to the stranger.

"The Bible; every word of it is true," he said with a distant glare. "God cast out Lucifer and the angels under his charge into the pits of Hell. Lucifer's pride and desire to become greater than God was his downfall. What the books don't tell you, and it's not the only omission, is that not all of his angels shared Lucifer's pride and desire to rule over Heaven.

"There were those who didn't want to rebel against God. But they were forced to because of the charge Lucifer had over them. They fought, were defeated and cast down, never to see the lights of Heaven again."

Van Helsing sighed deeply and said, "That's sad."

"But it's only my opinion, right? I have no proof," said the stranger as he smiled uncomfortably.

* * *

St. Peter's at the Vatican held beautiful murals in the windows of angels and saints alike. However, deep in its bowels a sound of horrible screeching passed its stone halls. The darkness the room was abundant in was held back by only a few torches. A holding cell with a glass window in the front held the contemptible creature that took the form of anything it wanted.

Three figures approached the cell. Carl, whose arms were still hurting from when the beast had tried to rip them out, walked in front with his brown flowing friar's robe. Lillian, brandishing a bruise on her cheek and a scratch on her lip, followed with her brown leather outfit and boots clacking along. Cardinal Jinette was last, wearing his crucifix close to his crimson-robe covered chest. The trio stopped at the cell door and the Man of God was the first to speak, saying, "In the name of God, I command you, creature, you will speak to us."

Cardinal Jinette could tell by her concentrated stare that Lillian McCloud was trying to probe the monster's mind. Silence reigned over the four beings for a minute until the Cardinal finally spoke, "Is it responding?"

"Yes," Lillian replied, blushing, "But if I repeat it, you'll excommunicate me."

Carl said, "Well, so much for cooperative interrogation."

Lillian looked toward the holy man and said, "Let me try harder to get him to talk." After Jinette gave her a sharp nod, she let her eyes glow brightly green, applying her telepathy once more. Despite the screeching sounds in the monstrosity's mind, coherent thoughts could be found.

_Why were you after Van Helsing?_

_It is the business of two people; me and someone who is not you. _

_We'll keep you here for as long as it takes. _

_I can escape anytime I want, you whore-spawn._

_Calling me names only gets me angry. And the last time I got angry, you went through a roof, three walls, a bathroom door, and a window. Care to find out if you can survive passing through stone?_

_gulp…What do you want?_

_The answer to my first question would be a lovely start. _

_I was sent to drive Van Helsing insane with guilt over his beloved Anna Valerious. My master knew your precious Order would send him out on a sabbatical. All that would be left for my master to do is find him and propose a bargain._

_What kind of bargain? _

_Join him. Become the general of his dark army and destroy the Vatican. And perhaps remember his true self in the process. _

_What if Van Helsing refuses? _

_What do you think?_

A look of horror graced the beautiful Irishwoman's face as she realized the truth. The apparitions Van Helsing said had assaulted him; the attack on Carl in town by what he thought was Van Helsing, and finally, the forced sabbatical. But one thing still bothered her…

_Why did you murder those people in town? _

_They were to draw him out, so I could lay the fruits of discord inside him. Also, because I love to beat people with my bare hands; as you and your friar friend can attest to. _

She broke the link to the creature and looked with worry at Carl and Cardinal Jinette, "What is it, my child?" he muttered.

Lillian shouted, before sprinting, "We must find Van Helsing."

"Why?" Carl interrupted, panting heavily as he tried to keep up, "What's going on?"

"He's in danger!" she yelled out.

Cardinal Jinette shouted out, "We do not know where he went, which road he traveled on."

The friar stopped and slammed his fist into his palm in an idea, "I have it! Why not send men down each road and search for him?"

"He may have split into different roads and may not even be in Italy anymore by now, Carl. Whoever this creature's master is, we have played out his plan like puppets on a string."

"If you don't mind my saying, Your Grace, but for a man of God, you seem to be coming up short on the faith," Lillian panted.

Cardinal Jinette replied, "On the contrary, my child, I have every faith we'll reach Van Helsing. My only doubt is whether we will do so in time to save him."

Lillian and Carl stopped running, fearing the Cardinal was right.

* * *

Van Helsing seemed to connect with his mysterious new friend. He noticed the man groaned and muttered whenever he had to adjust his puffed up shirt and pants. "So, what do you do for a living?" the young man said, after adjusting his attire for the seventeenth time.

"I'm, uh…what you might call a big game hunter," Gabriel said with a casual truthful voice. He _was_, in fact, a hunter. He omitted that his prey were all of the monsters, madmen, and evil beings that would plunge the world into darkness should he fail.

"That's interesting," the stranger said, pushing a strand of hair back from his face. "I've always admired hunters. It's an exclusive pastime, really. There are many different skills of hunters. There are those who hunt for sport, which let us be in earnest here, is no more than a case of fools having nothing-better-to-do. You want sport; I hear they let bovines run rampant in Pamplona once a year.

"There are those who hunt out of necessity, for food and clothing. Some slay an entire family of deer so their children won't freeze or starve to death in the harsh winter. I have no issues towards those who hunt for survival.

"Then there are my personal favorites; they that hunt for the thrill of taking life. What makes this act so invigorating? Is it the sight of the prey's blood as it escapes the prison that held it inside for so long? Is it the sight of the corpse afterwards? Or is it the act of taking life itself? When you fire a gun, when you drive a blade into skin and muscle, or when you bring objects or your fists raining down on your prey. There is nothing as liberating as the killing of one's prey."

Van Helsing began to feel uneasy at the tone of the man's voice when he turned, facing him and saying, "My favorite part of the hunt is the point at which you have reached a comfortable pace. To where it becomes a matter of what moment the hunter decides to end the game, or to toy with his victim just a little longer. The conditions are just perfect.

"You've allowed the prey to believe that there is nothing watching, waiting for the moment to rip their life away from them with a bullet, a blade, their bare hands, whatever the imagination can conceive. Many have no idea the rush it gives one to be in a position to determine life and death. Being a hunter yourself, surely you've asked, 'Is this how it feels to be God? To know that if it be your will this pitiful creature can drop dead within an instant; is that what omnipotence feels like? Such questions fill the mind of the hunter."

Van Helsing turned toward the stranger and adjusted his hat. "Actually," he said, after a deep breath, "That doesn't sound like the mind of a hunter at all." His right hand rested firmly on the revolver by his right hip. "In fact, sounds more like a cold-blooded murderer."

"But isn't that what people have branded you, Van Helsing?" the young lad said, just before whipping his body towards the monster hunter as if to attack.

_Bad move,_ Van Helsing thought, as his reflexes and instinct snapped into action. The gun barely made a sound leaving the holster, but the thunder blast of gunpowder and metal hitting skin echoed through the valley beneath the falls. The hole in the stranger's once perfectly clear forehead left a clear view of the bridge pathway. Van Helsing thought he'd dispatched a threat to his life. Speaking a prayer in Latin and making the sign of the cross, he turned to walk away.

"Dammit!" Van Helsing heard the impossible. Normally, even in his profession, once you destroy the head, the body is supposed to die. Turning around, Gabriel saw that, truly, anything is possible; especially when the man he shot in the forehead was still standing. He trying to wipe blood off his expensive fluffy shirt and the hole in his head disappeared when he said, "Do you know how hard bloodstains are to get out of these clothes?"

* * *

Act Three:

The image would be burned in whatever was left of Van Helsing's memory. He'd just blown open the head of a young man whom he had just met on the stone river bridge overlooking a beautiful waterfall. The hole was no bigger than a silver dollar, but you could spy birds through it. Instead of falling over dead, the hole began to close up, veins and bone retracted back to its source, except that which laid on the young man's face and fluffy shirt. The aristocrat's anger was focused not on Gabriel Van Helsing putting one right in the old thinking muscle, but…

"I can't believe you splattered blood all over my good shirt! Do you have any idea how many of these are left in the world? Oh, dear Lo…ugh…I should skin you alive right now JUST for this!" Van Helsing objected by holding up his gun once more and aimed directly at this…thing's heart. (Provided it _had_ one) to which the supposed-to-be-dead man said, "Oh, go ahead, add gunpowder to the mess. That'll make the shirt even more worthless!"

In a weird way, this creature was right, the monster hunter realized. The only thing shooting him would accomplish was soiling his shirt further, and angering him even more. "What are you?"

"I'm pretty damned pissed, that's what!" the young man shouted, sighing at his shirt as Van Helsing kept the gun in front of him. "Believe it or not, I came to offer you an opportunity."

"Do tell," the hunter said, trying to swallow his surprise, holding the pistol with all his strength, despite the fact that it would do no good.

"Yes," the young man said, stepping forward. "You see, I've been watching you for a long time, Van Helsing. Not in the bathroom, though, I don't do male nudity. But I think you are an interesting acquisition. No memory of your past, unenviable task of battling Hell's finest, or worst, depending on your point of view; Serving the Holy Order in the defense of humankind."

"That doesn't answer my question," He said, pulling the pistol away and holstering the weapon, "What are you?"

"My name is Malvolion," the aristocrat said, bowing his head, showing how it showed no signs of a bullet ever passing through it. "But allow me to cut to the chase, if you will. I wish to help you find purpose in your life. Is it really fair for the Order to have you fight their battles? How do you even know that this is _your_ fight? They find you on their doorsteps and tell you that the only way you will recover your memory is if God restores it if you've killed enough monsters? Some deal they made you, my friend. Here you are, dealing with nightmarish monsters to protect society and they brand you a murderer when they find a corpse that doesn't look exactly monstrous. But it's not your fault many of them were or used to be human. You're just doing your job."

"Take Mr. Hyde for example, the Order told you to bring him in to exorcise the good Doctor Jekyll from within. You did what you felt was necessary to stop him. Semantically, it involved killing him, but the threat was neutralized. But they decided to get mad because that oaf smashed the Rose Window at Notre Dame and that the police found Jekyll's corpse instead of Hyde's…hide."

"I explained it to them," Gabriel said with a half-smile, remembering Cardinal Jinette wishing him a week in Hell for that. "They took it rather well."

"They sent you out to Transylvania to destroy Dracula, or as some call him, Mr. Polygamy," Malvolion said, looking over the stone bridge's rails to the river below and the waterfall it flowed into. "That's where you met Anna."

Van Helsing grunted at the sound of her name. He loved her, for what short time they had together. He would trade his "calling" as the Cardinal describes the job, to have that time back with Anna Valerious. "What do you know about Anna?"

Smarmily, the young looking human-like creature said, "Other than her bosom size, favorite foods and things she _likes_ in a man…Oh, you mean where it concerns you? Well, that's easy. I know your heart and loins were passionately aflame for her. I know she felt the same feelings for you. One more thing I know about her, and this one's very important so listen carefully, is that you fatally crushed her while under the influence of the werewolf's curse."

A tear went down Van Helsing's cheek as Malvolion continued his speech, putting an arm around him. He said, "Still hurts, doesn't it? You see, that and your memory are part of the reasons why you're here. I've been planning this meeting for quite some time. Well, actually I didn't expect you to take the southern road and end up here, but to be honest I couldn't have picked a better spot."

"You planned this? The murders, the ghostly apparitions of Anna?" the hunter said, breaking away from the young aristocrat's grip. "This was all a plan to get me out here and pitch your proposal to me?"

"Well, the murders were not my idea. I hired into my service a Mimicker, a shape-shifter, if you will. I showed it pictures of Anna and informed it on what happened at the 'House of Vladislaus,' if you will. Then I told it to draw you out and then begin to mess with your head and the head of your compatriots at the Order. Naturally, they'd think you've lost your already fragile mind and request you take some time off to get yourself back to merely amnesiac instead of hallucinatory."

"This whole thing was a plan to recruit me?" Van Helsing said, unable to hide the ingeniousness of the plan.

"What have I just been explaining to you in long-winded exposition?"

"You're quite knowledgeable, Malvolion," Van Helsing said, stepping toward the young man, "You know of the Order, and of my job. You know about my mission in Transylvania."

"I also know that your calling is a fool's errand. Fighting the monstrosities of an entire world is too much for one man. And unless you realize this, one day you will grow too old to perform such a job. What do you think the Knights of the Holy Order will do then? Put you on the training board? Canonize you into sainthood? Let you live a nice, peaceful life in a villa? Try throwing you out of the church altogether, leaving you to spend the rest of your life running from the police, no closer to finding out who you really are than when you started; provided that they don't out and out kill you to protect their privacy. Join me; together we'll tell the Order where they can take their precious 'calling'."

Van Helsing became more and more impressed with Malvolion, whose wisdom seemed to aggressively belie his assumed age. "No." Van Helsing smiled, staring into the deep sky blue eyes that seemingly held no malice.

"Congratulations on making the right you said 'no,' didn't you?" Malvolion said, the tone changing from ecstatic to somber in a swift second.

Van Helsing nodded, then brought his face close to the young man's and let their eyes join in lock as he spoke, "I have no deep love for the Order, or my job. But until I rediscover my real identity, if I don't fight the monsters, then who will; and on a more personal note, had I not gone to Transylvania, Anna surely would've died anyway."

Sighing, and shaking his head, Malvolion said, "I must now apologize and express my deepest regret." Suddenly, his hand clutched with uncanny speed around the hunter's throat and lifted him off his feet with little effort. Gabriel choked and gasped as Malvolion clarified his statement by saying, "I regret that I must now bloody my shirt even more by crushing you like a grape."

* * *

It had to escape, the formless creature known as the mimicker thought sitting Indian style in its stone and glass cell. The job was finished, most assuredly, but it wanted to make the friar and the fire-headed lady pay dearly for what transpired. So far, no plans had come up and the Cardinal and the friar had been back previously to check on their unwilling guest. The friar was easily scared away, which drove a smile onto its featureless face, save for the scratch above the eye from the last victim. But it would be free, rest assured and it will squash them like…

The mimicker screeched triumphantly, it had the idea to escape. However, it pondered performing such a task. Shape-shifting into rats and people were easy enough for a master of the art such as it was. But to perform what needed to be done would be excruciating. But the more it thought of its confinement and of those who dared to lock it up, the more of such fear of horrific pain vanished from its mind. Within seconds, there was no fear, only anger being filtered through intense concentration.

Father Salvatore Fellini was ordered by Cardinal Jinette to look in on a prisoner in the last cell in the catacombs. The specific words used were, "If you see anything in there, leave." It seemed very cryptic to him. However, he was on higher authority and he always wanted to impress the hierarchy in the Church as a dutiful follower and man of the cloth.

Upon reaching the catacombs, he spotted several doors with glass windows in place of bars. He imagined this is where the Holy Order kept many a prisoner or possessed person. If there were beings occupying these other holding cells, he didn't want to know about it. _Just check the last cell at the end of the hall_ he thought.

The keys jingled loudly as he stuck the particular cell key in the lock. The padre looked through the glass window and saw no more than the stone bowels of the confinement. The Cardinal told him to let it be if he saw anything inside. But this time, he saw nothing but the dark lit torches that light the inside of the cell. Opening the door, he looked on at the nothingness with puzzlement. Muttering his disappointed disdain in Italian, he shook his head and heard a groaning sound.

The noise, coming from behind, drew Father Fellini to see a tarantula growing. Four of its limbs retracted inside its body. The hair covering its epidermis rapidly shrunk into the pores. The multiple eyes of a tarantula disappeared into its head leaving only two behind. A mouth replaced the mandibles on the face as the body began to grow into something grayish white, and almost human.

Yet it was clearly not human, especially when its left heel suddenly flew out and smashed into his mouth. Cardinal Jinette would return to the cell a few minutes later to find Father Salvatore Fellini in place of the creature, nude and his head smashed in.

* * *

Carl, in his brown friar's robes, mounted the carriage along with Lillian, in her red flowing cloak and brown leather in the rider's seat. Together, they headed down the southern road at breakneck speed. They just had to reach Van Helsing in time, but they had faith that the hunter's salvation depended on which team got there to him first.

Stowing along for the ride was a figure beneath the carriage, smiling with full teeth, ready to strike when the time was right. It would take its revenge on these two pitiful fools.

"Carl," Lillian said, holding her head, "I think something's wrong."

"Van Helsing's in danger because of this master that shape-shifter serves," the friar shouted out, the roar of the horses' hooves clopping in a frantic pace. "He could be dying or dead or who knows what, and we were duped into letting it happen. So, yes, you could say something definitely is wrong."

Whispering into his ear, she said, "I don't think we're alone…I can't tell you where it's coming from, but it's following us…whatever it is."

"Well," Carl whispered back, "What should we do?"

She closed her eyes and said, "You just keep driving for a minute.

The friar nodded as he kept the pace, but allowed Lillian to do what she needed. And whatever she needed to do, it required her eyes glowing bright green and cackling like flames from her sockets. She traced the minds of almost every life form within the radius of the carriage, until she heard a familiar, eerie screeching sound.

"Carl!" she exclaimed, nearly startling the friar into dropping the reigns. "It's the creature, the shape-changer, and it's here with us on the carriage."

"Where is it?"

"I don't know, but it's on the carriage somewhere and we have to lose it." Frantically, Carl tried to think of a way out of the situation, but she spoke up and said, "Keep driving. Give me a few minutes, after that, you follow my instructions exactly; exactly, you hear?"

Carl nodded and kept his grip tight once more, driving. Lillian's eyes glowed bright green once more as she focused on the screws holding the bridle and yolk to the carriage.

* * *

Van Helsing felt the air pass by him as he slammed onto the ground twenty feet away from where Malvolion had punched him. It had been that way since the young human-looking monster grabbed him by the throat a minute ago. Every blow Gabriel struck with his fists and pistol handle, didn't seem to faze the young being at all. The monster hunter for an instant wished he possessed werewolf strength once more when a single sharp punch to the ribs sent him flying.

He looked up from the floor of the stone bridge and tried to get to his feet quickly as Malvolion approached him. "I'm very disappointed in you, Van Helsing. Not enough that I expected you to make the right choice…but in the event you refused, I expected a fight," he said with disdain, "If I wanted to smack someone around, I have concubines or the street whores for a bag of gold."

Van Helsing whipped his right arm around and grabbed his grappling gun. With a quick shot, he fired the grappling hook at Malvolion's legs. The missile-like object was about to slip right between them, but the hooks spread out at the second the hunter's finger left the trigger. They slammed directly into the aristocrat's legs at the chins, sweeping him off his feet and face first onto the stone bridge floor.

Snatching his hat up as he ran toward his steed, Van Helsing quickly mounted and yelled, "Hyah!" trying to escape. It would prove futile when Malvolion, blood not flowing but still fresh on his nose, clutched the horse's left hind leg as he knelt. His left fist plowed into the animal's leg, breaking it with the ease of a twig. After Van Helsing rolled off the saddle, he witnessed horrific strength as he saw his beautiful black mare lifted by the back and thrown off the bridge and into the river. There was no expression of straining or even a hint of effort shown in the monster's human face.

The horse's pleading whinnies could be heard for a few more seconds until the waterfall silenced it for good. Malvolion looked toward the falls and then to the hunter, saying, "I'm sorry; you just missed your ride."

With a shouting charge, Van Helsing pulled out a shotgun and fired rapid shots into his adversary's chest, head, and legs…any body part on this thing that can be destroyed. Blood sprayed out of each wound, but the wounds all cleared up with instantaneous efficiency. But he knew that wouldn't work.

Van Helsing knew clubbing Malvolion with the shotgun wouldn't do much damage either. But it wasn't hurting him that Van Helsing was going for. He wanted to know if this strange creature was strong enough to swim upstream near a waterfall. One swing staggered Malvolion against the concrete railing. Another swing would miss as he ducked and swerved behind Van Helsing. He held the shotgun out horizontally in front of the hunter. Gabriel ran his foot onto the rail and flipped over Malvolion and tried to choke the creature.

But the strength that propelled his horse to its doom showed through once more, as it was used to bend and finally snap Van Helsing's shotgun with ease. "Whoops," he said, driving his elbow back hard into Van Helsing's stomach, hurling him back ten feet onto the ground. The hunter groggily got to his feet, holding the grapping hook as a weapon of attack as he charged once more. Bringing an individual hook down onto his left shoulder, it sank deep into the torso of the creature.

Malvolion, whose black mane was strung out from excessive assault, winced in pain as the hook dug into his body, hitting just above his intestines. Using his free hand, he shoved Van Helsing away easily. It would be another matter entirely to remove the hook from his insides. He knew it would hurt despite his strength. First it was a small tug, then a hard jerk followed by a violent pull. The hook didn't come out the way it went in, but it broke through Malvolion's chest, exposing his innards and leaving his left side dangling for a horrified Van Helsing to see. It didn't matter what he was, he was in an ungodly world of pain.

Malvolion's blood sprayed into the river and onto the deck of the bridge as he tossed the weapon over the side, dragging the gun and rope it came with over the side. "That actually kind of hurt a little bit, I should be ashamed for doubting the fight in you," he said with a smile, waiting for his shoulder to heal up in a few seconds.

What the hell was it going to take to finish this monster? It was a safe bet that decapitation wouldn't have worked against Malvolion, and Van Helsing just saw the man split near in half by removing the grappling hook. Bullets go right through him and every single wound inflicted upon him wounds heal up in seconds. As he painfully pushed himself to his feet, the darkly clad hunter searched for a weapon that would help him defeat his opponent. Touching on his pockets, he smiled keenly.

Malvolion stepped lively toward his prey, healed up from the hook attack. The prey charged once more, annoying the young-looking powerhouse. He was beginning to grow weary. Van Helsing leaped into the air, arms outstretched, screaming at the top of his lungs. Malvolion lifted his hand up, knelt down and used the hunter's momentum to toss him onto the railing.

Van Helsing landed back first onto the stone railing, and started to slide into the raging river below. With a deft clutch, Malvolion's left hand caught Gabriel's right wrist. As when he threw Gabriel's horse into the river, there was no sign of strain or even effort as he held on. "Van Helsing…or should I call you Gabriel?" he said with a smile that Van Helsing would give anything to break with his fist. "This was a rousing little contest. I must say your performance here is making me feel uncharacteristically generous; enough so to give you a second chance. Don't make us both regret it, my friend. So what do you say?"

Van Helsing's left hand disappeared into his pocket while he looked forward at the falls awaiting him should he fall into the river just several feet beneath his boots. The voice of Malvolion, who had long passed "annoying", chimed out, "What's your decision! I don't have all day to hold your hand. You have a roguish charm but sorry, you just don't do it for me."

The hunter, whose long dark brown hair flowed roughly as he looked upward at what could be the most dangerous foe he'd met since Dracula, smiled. "Well then, I guess I'll just be on my way." With lightning reflexes all his own, Van Helsing raised one of his whirling pump-action saw blades and sliced it through Malvolion's left wrist. He cried out in pain and surprise as Van Helsing fell into the strong-flowing river below. The water, at a comfortable temperature, increased its current as he tried to gain one more breath before going down the waterfall. The last thing the hunter could wonder was why Malvolion's hand is still attached to his wrist.

The aristocratic inhuman creature growled in disappointment at himself. How could he not have seen that coming? How could he forget the blades? "Dammit!" He said, slamming his right fist into the stone railing, which gave way easily to his power. "That was my painting hand!" he roared as Van Helsing let the water carrying him into what could be his doom.

* * *

Lillian had been careful with removing the screws from the outer links, leaving the screws to fly into the woods along the trail. The only remaining link was in the middle. "Carl," she said, grabbing her crimson cloak tightly around her, "When I say, jump onto the horses and cut the straps onto the harness."

"What?" Carl said, incredulously with a yelp, "Why? What are you…" he paused looking down to see Lillian's handiwork and he let his eyes dart towards the fire-haired beauty and he shouted, "Have you lost your damned bloody…"

"Quiet!" she shouted, then whispered, "It'll hear you and then it'll be too late. Just do it when I say." A sharp turn came ahead and Lillian quietly swore unprepared for such an obstacle. No matter what she did with the screw, that carriage would turn over in a minute. She tried to focus her energies on that last damn screw, despite Carl's high pitched protests. She had no doubt the creature would tire of waiting and strike soon, so she tried to unscrew the screw as quickly as she could.

Finally, the screw came undone, and she triumphantly smiled. Lillian's facial expression, however, would turn from success to horror, seeing the turn only seconds away. "NOW, CARL!" she screamed, grabbing onto the friar's brown robes and jumping onto the yolk the horses were fastened to. Once landing onto the back of the mares, she barked out, "Cut the straps!" To which Carl immediately complied, removing the straps and riding along his respective horse. Lillian did the same and the horses made the turn without a problem. The carriage, however, would blaze right into it and the creature let out a scream of anger as it let go of the underbelly of the vehicle.

The shape shifter tumbled down the hill, but it looked on in shock as the wooden carriage crashed while somersaulting down the slope. They could've killed it and the notion of two such amateurs getting the best of an experienced killer made it screech in rage. It sprinted off in pursuit after climbing back up the hill.

Lillian and Carl had to make their way to the front two horses and release them from the straps to be on their way. The red haired telepath and the blond, frail friar climb on top of the horses they landed on and jumped into the next set. After readjusting, they made one final leap onto the front pair of brown horses and severing the straps. Both Carl and Lillian gallop along the trail as fast as they could, leaving the rest of the horses to stop in the middle of the trail.

"We lost it, I think," Carl said, panicked and out of breath. Suddenly a roar in the distance from behind drew their attention. Looking around, they couldn't find the source of the noise. All that could be heard was the clopping of their horse's respective hooves. The roar previously gave way to a gust of wind picking the leaves up at an instant's notice. Lillian and Carl couldn't help but feel the chills down their spines, yet not by the wind. They both knew there was no wind earlier in the day when they inspected the crime scene they caught the creature at.

A large shadow swooped over the horseback riding duo with a high pitched screeching. They decided not to look above them to spot a potentially disturbing image and ride on towards Van Helsing. The wind produced by the "winged" creature ceased as abruptly as it started, leaving only the air rushing past Carl and Lillian as they continue their ride.

Out of the bushes, with violent speed and strength, a tiger leaped into the air and tackled Lillian's horse. The ribs of the mare were crushed instantly upon hitting the ground, and the red-haired young Irishwoman screamed out as the tiger slashed at her leg. "KEEP GOIN' CARL!" she shouted in pain, before the tiger, in a quick fashion, morphed into the monster. Before Lillian could react, a gray, smooth fist slammed violently into her face. She felt four more blows before passing out.

Carl wanted to keep going, to help Van Helsing against whatever he was up against. However, he knew the mimicker would kill Lillian in her dazed and confused state. Plus, Carl was nothing if not chivalrous; one could say that about him. He turned his horse around and galloped toward his partner in distress.

The mimicker morphed into a black-scaled Anaconda and began to wrap around Lillian's motionless body. The grip tightened, robbing her lungs of air and causing bones to strain and ribs to crack. Suddenly, the high pitched charging scream of the young friar broke its concentration, letting the grip loosen slightly.

Carl grabbed an object out of his pouch and tossed it at the monstrosity. A bright light blinded the anaconda and caused it to release the young lady. In its stupor, the mimicker's true form emerged once more. Carl pulled out a mace from Lillian's bag and charged once more to attack.

The creature was ready as it ducked under an over-exerted swing, and drove a hard kick into the friar's back. Carl slammed onto the ground, dropping the mace. Suddenly he heard his own voice saying, "Come now, friar. You're a highly trained agent of the Knights of the Holy Order. Surely you can do better than hitting my fists with your face."

Carl got up, grabbed the mace and swung it once more. Like before, he swung too hard, the weighty weapon dragging him ahead. The momentum brought him into a right jab by the doppelganger. The other Carl followed up with a left hook to the stomach, a right backhand into his left cheek and a straight kick into his chest, sending him back onto his back. "Then again," the creature said with a sigh, "maybe not."

The diminutively framed friar groaned as he pushed to his feet. The mimicker in Carl's visage mocked each groan and laughed in joyous amusement. "You really thought you could get in the way of the master's plan?"

Carl snatched up the mace once again and held it high against him. "Well, the thought crossed my mind, to be perfectly honest with you."

"I would say, 'Don't be a fool' but we are who we are," the creature said mockingly, dodging another swing from the mace. "I'm certain my master has made his proposal to Van Helsing by this time. Now, I don't have a high opinion of your friend; if it were up to me, I would've killed him days ago. But if he is smart enough to comprehend my generous benefactor's deal, he'd accept without hesitation."

"You don't know Van Helsing," Carl said, futilely swinging the mace once more, hitting nothing but air.

To which the fake Carl replied while dodging the mace, "Technically, neither do you."

Carl screamed and charged once more. By that time, the mimicker had shown disappointment in its face as it moved swiftly. It caught the mace in its left hand as it swung to him. "Carl" swerved his right arm over the friar's arms and elbowed him twice in the face. Pulling the mace out of Carl's hands, the mimicker swung it hard into his prey's stomach, flipping him over in a crashing heap of suffering.

Blood squirted from the friar's mouth and settled on his cheeks as he excruciatingly tried to move. The mimicker in Carl's image casually tossed the mace away and stalked its prey. "I need your help with something," it mocked in the friar's voice, "I am having trouble choosing a way to kill you. It's rare that I meet someone I have so much fun decimating, that I want that person's end to be truly meaningful. In my profession, one can't have too many of these moments, so we take what we can get."

It stalked Carl's pain-racked, writhing body with the eagerness of a hungry wolf, yet the apprehension of a little child on his/her first day in school. With a gleeful delight saturating its voice, the mimicker said, "Should I kill you as a bear? Hmmm, would that be good for you? Ever wondered what it's like to be slashed up and crushed under a massive bag of fur? What about a lion? I take it you've never had your still living flesh ripped off you and being consumed by the proclaimed king of the jungle. You have no idea how many ways I can kill you. However, I only have one chance to do it right."

Suddenly, Carl's visage faded from the friar's sight. While such a notion brought a slight relief to the hunter-in-training, the replacing image quickly substituted his relief into horror. "I think I know how to finish you off," the mimicker said, taking the voice and form of Van Helsing. It walked over toward a large stone sitting on the side of the road. With a considerable amount of straining the boulder was hoisted over the creature's simulated brown flowing locks.

"Van Helsing" walked calmly over toward Carl, trying to stand, but finding it impossible. It said, "You risked your life to come out and help your friend. You care a lot for him. So I think it would be fitting, that a pathetic, friendless little worm like you should be destroyed, with the last image in your mind being the face of your best friend."

Raising the rock as far as it will go, the creature smiled with triumphant joy, unaware until too late of a screaming madman racing toward him. The figure tackled him violently, leaving the large stone to fall. The weapon intended for Carl's demise only crashed against his right foot, nearly crushing it.

At first, when Carl turned around, he swore his vision might be blurred. He saw two Van Helsing's rolling around on the ground, snarling like angry wolverines after a piece of meat. One distinguishing factor that made discerning the two was that one Van Helsing was soaked, clothes completely dripping wet as if he'd been swimming.

* * *

Gabriel knew he had once chance. The creature was down, confused, and, in theory, momentarily unable to change. His blows would have come down hard and fast. The plummet down the falls and the cold water sapped his energy greatly. The battle with Malvolion as well as the injuries received as a result didn't help matters. He'd scream and land blow after blow.

However, three punches into the plan, the creature wearing his face and clothing caught his right fist. With a sneer, it said, "I take it you turned down the master's offer. I'm glad. Now I'll…" before the mimicker could say more, Van Helsing head-butted the mirror-image in the mouth. The hunter followed up with a knee to the stomach and a left cross.

With screams bordering primal and animal-like in its own right, Gabriel continued to beat the face of the creature. Each blow landed on a different spot, yet increased in ferocity. Conscious thought kept screaming that it was the shape-shifter, yet he kept that visage in his mind.

This was what he had prayed for every night. Every night he lay in bed and dreamt of meeting Anna's murderer. True, he had been under the werewolf's curse. Also true is the fact that he couldn't help himself while under said curse. But those facts didn't help him sleep better. No amount of reasoning or even his own admission to such despair would make him feel better. Her death hung heavily on his conscience like a man in the ocean with stones tied around his neck.

Gabriel Van Helsing unleashed a primal scream that regurgitated his sorrow and guilt. His rage, however, flowed into his fists as he continued his brutal assault. The mimicker couldn't think or react, and its painful screeches echoed through the forest with each blow. Every hit he struck, he pictured not only his face, but Malvolion's as well. This was the brutality upon which Van Helsing could only wish towards those he hated.

Two minutes passed before Van Helsing stopped his pummeling of the creature. Even though it had still worn his form, the face was violently unrecognizable. Both eyes were swollen shut and the fake hunter's nose was completely obliterated. Teeth were strewn on the ground and some might been swallowed as well. The little movement the shape-shifter displayed was its fingers twitching in an instinctive spasm. After Van Helsing tried to push himself to his feet, the creature laid lifeless before him.

Gabriel stood panting over the creature, whose death caused it to transform, one more time, into its original featureless form. The only distinguishing features were the rampage Van Helsing let loose on its face. Carl, still in pain from the mace slamming into his stomach, crawled toward his friend and said, "So," Carl grimaced, "how was your sabbatical?"

With an incredulous gaze and exasperation seeping along with the drops of blood from his mouth and forehead, Van Helsing's only word in response was, "Brutal, painful…a lot like work."

Lillian stirred from unconsciousness and staggered once on her feet. "Van Helsing!" she groaned out, falling into the hunter's arms. "Are you alright now?"

Gabriel's eyes fell upon the creature that manipulated him by turning into Anna…manipulated his friends by turning into him…and tried to kill them all using various animalistic incarnations. Despite the two wounded friends he carried, he never felt lighter. "I'm alright. Now, it's a long walk to the Vatican, I suggest we get moving," he said, to the groans of his present company.

Lillian finally spoke up, staggering along the way, "Wait a minute, what about those horses in the carriage yolk?"

* * *

A large lake flowed smoothly into a river while still maintaining its capacity. Birds and fish alike frolicked freely as the sun began its slow decent into the nothingness for another night. A bear stepped out of the wading depths with fish in mouth, satisfied by his catch. Ants and bees maintained their respective hives like any other day and all seemed right.

He walked down the pathway into the pool where the waterfall had emptied. The regal-looking gentleman knew what he was looking for. His shirt was gone, exposing a magnificently sculpted body. His black hair flowed with the wind, trying to escape his head on its power, but never succeeding. Stopping at the edge of the water, Malvolion suddenly felt anger in the pit of his stomach. He would make Van Helsing pay for what he'd done.

He calmly stepped out onto the water, not into, but onto. Walking on the surface, the aristocratic enigmatic being stepped into the center of the lake and extended the healed nub of his left wrist. He smiled as his beloved left hand, the one he called his 'painting hand', emerging from the water. It reattached itself to the wrist it longed for to Malvolion's delight. However, once he tried working the fingers, his hand shook slightly due to the nerve damage. This brought the anger-saturated scowl back once more.

Yes, Van Helsing would indeed pay for that.

The end.


End file.
